The Unhomely: Explorations of diaspora, and cultural displacement

KV Duon (b.1980 Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam) is a London-based artist with a practice that spans painting, sculpture, and performance. Duong grew up in Canada to Chinese Vietnamese parents displaced by the Vietnam War. In his work, he explores themes of migration and cultural assimilation, through a re-examination of his parents’ and his own experiences. War trauma and integration correlate with the artist coming out as a gay Asian man.

In this series Unhomely, Duong creates imagined landscapes using historic Vietnam War images juxtaposed with uncanny scenes of contemporary everyday life. Through the device of a ‘room’, time and space are delineated. The physical separation creates a sanctuary to work-through and work-over the past within a safe present-day haven.

Duong retells a history that has been distorted through media censorship and displaced through passed-on experiences, and in so doing suggests a new psychological reality. The material surface is corrupted—ripped, scratched, painted over—to disrupt any simple representation. The traumatised surface of the final work responds to conflict and the altered effects of the original events of war migration and suppression of speech. Perspective and scale are warped to create a tension between the object and subject relation.

Duong is a self-taught artist with a Masters in Structural Engineering. He is a recent recipient of funding from Arts Council of England, Jerwood Arts, and a-n. Duong presented his first institutional solo exhibition at the Migration Museum in spring 2022.  He is scheduled for an exhibition at Museum of the Home in spring 2023.

Dr Errol Francis is Artistic director and CEO of Culture&. Errol studied photography and fine art at Central Saint Martin’s, University of the Arts London. His doctoral research at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London focused on postcolonial artistic responses to museums.

Errol’s background in mental health activism has influenced his arts practice such as his role as head of arts at the Mental Health Foundation and his directing of the Anxiety Arts Festival 2014, Cyborgs 2019 and his work in the curatorial research group PS/Y.

Errol is currently content producer for the Culture Box research project at the University of Exeter, which promotes social interaction and public health through the arts in the time of Covid-19 for people living with dementia in care homes. He is visiting lecturer at the University of Greenwich, Goldsmith’s University of London and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

Charmaine Watkiss was born in London to Jamaican parents. She completed her MA in Drawing at Wimbledon College of Art, 2018. Her work is concerned with what she calls ‘memory stories’. She creates narratives primarily through research connected to the African Caribbean diaspora, which is then mapped onto female figures. She draws herself only as a conduit to relay stories that speak about a collective experience; starting with a theme then allowing intuition and a dialogue with the work to take over. Her practice addresses themes including, ritual, tradition, ancestry, mythology and cosmology. Charmaine has recently shifted her gaze towards the natural world, investigating the herbal healing traditions of Caribbean women, especially those of her mother’s generation, and connecting those traditions through colonisation, back to their roots in Africa. Charmaine currently has a solo show at Leeds Art Gallery.

She lives and works in London and is represented by Tiwani Contemporary gallery.

Dr Owen Hewitson holds a PhD in Psychoanalysis and practices psychoanalytic psychotherapy at the Guild of Psychotherapists, and in private practice. He is the co-author of ‘Reading Lacan’s Écrits’ (2021), ‘Reading Lacan’s Seminar VIII’ (2020) and several other books and journal articles. He speaks in the UK and internationally about psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in theory and practice.

Gaynor Tutani (Art Adlib) is a curator, producer and writer who merges her various arts, culture, community and educational passions to produce exhibitions, events and commentaries on art and curating. Her speciality is in public programming – hosting music performances, talks, interviews and poetry programs, of which she extends as part of her practice as the Creative Programing Officer at the Museum of the Home. Working across the Creative Programmes and Collections team, as well as the Commercial and Campaigns division, her role centres on aligning the Museum’s programming within the core values and vision of engaging with the museum communities through fundraising and programming that interrogates critical societal issues through an artistic practice.

She is the Co-founder of EARTHworks [Artists], a curatorial duo that is dedicated to promoting creative collaborations through an intergenerational lens. Their work aims to raise awareness of the benefits of art and art making practices to health and well-being, alongside global issues such as climate change, equality and diversity.

Gaynor holds a BA in History and History of Ideas from Goldsmith’s university of London, is currently undertaking postgraduate studies in Museum Cultures and Curating at Birkbeck University of London, specialising in African art, difficult histories, and decolonial approaches.